Re: [RFC] simple_lmk: Introduce Simple Low Memory Killer for Android

[Sultan Alsawaf]

On Tue, May 07, 2019 at 09:04:30AM +0200, Greg Kroah-Hartman wrote:
> Um, why can't "all" Android devices take the same patches that the Pixel
> phones are using today?  They should all be in the public android-common
> kernel repositories that all Android devices should be syncing with on a
> weekly/monthly basis anyway, right?
> 
> thanks,
> 
> greg k-h

Hi Greg,

I only see PSI present in the android-common kernels for 4.9 and above. The vast
majority of Android devices do not run a 4.9+ kernel. It seems unreasonable to
expect OEMs to toil with backporting PSI themselves to get decent memory
management.

But even if they did backport PSI, it wouldn't help too much because a
PSI-enabled LMKD solution is not ready yet. It looks like a PSI-based LMKD is
still under heavy development and won't be ready for all Android devices for
quite some time.

Additionally, it looks like the supposedly-dead lowmemorykiller.c is still being
actively tweaked by Google [1], which does not instill confidence that a
definitive LMK solution a la PSI is coming any time soon.

Thanks,
Sultan

[1] https://android.googlesource.com/kernel/common/+/152bacdd85c46f0c76b00c4acc253e414513634c